With Elon Musk Other leaders of the so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency (DOGE) allegedly on the way out, Wired talked to the fired Doge staff about his experience, the way the organization communicated, and seemed to be the person in charge and what might happen next.
Earlier this week, Sahil Lavingia posted a blog post on his personal website detailing his 55-day work in Doge. Lavingia first served as a member of Doge in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and he is CEO of Gumroad, the platform that helps creatives sell their work.
Lavingia describes his overall impression of the projects he worked in Virginia and his work with Doge in his post. Lavingia describes Doge operations as “chaotic” with little information sharing between different teams.
All of this may change soon, as Musk said over the past few weeks that he will largely abandon his duties. His closest lieutenants Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander seem to be leaving as well. Davis has worked with Musk for many years, including at X, as CEO of a boring company, and has been an integral part of Doge’s daily operations.
Lavingia said it was unclear who would lead Doge and in which direction it would be, without Davis at the helm.
“Steven is the only one who is all over the world,” Lavingia told Wiried.
Musk, Davis and Holland did not answer Wired’s request for comment.
Lavingia told Wired that Davis appears to be the one who directs most Doge activities at different agencies and is directly in contact with all Doge members. In general, in Lavingia’s experience, a correspondence occurs with an application signal using encrypted messaging.
Experts and lawmakers have previously warned that using signals for official government communications could violate the law and require government employees to maintain all communication records. Earlier this year, then-national security adviser Mike Waltz unexpectedly added the Atlantic editor to a signal group chat, where Waltz and other senior Trump administration officials discussed the coming and sensitive military operations in Yemen.
Lavingia said Davis will provide attention to those led by the Governor’s team of specific institutions. Lavingia told Wired on VA that Davis directed the Doge team to prioritize canceling the contract’s review contract. He said Davis would send messages to Lavingia regularly to check his work, but rarely answered Lavingia’s answer.
According to Lavingia, Davis was at a meeting with Musk in late March, known as the “E Conference”. Lavingia said many of the church workers he met at that meeting seemed to focus on performing tasks Davis assigned them.
The “E Conference” attended two other musk loyalists, Anthony Armstrong and Baris Akis. Lavingia said the three — Armstrong, Arkith and Davis — were shown as heads.
“Steven is basically like the chief of staff or body figure when Elon was there,” he said.
